


A Different Kind of Mask

by Callmetiny



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, Mask-induced shenanigans, mainly so I can take advantage of the masks, set in China, so many masks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 19:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17966498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmetiny/pseuds/Callmetiny
Summary: In present-day Beijing, it’s not exactly uncommon to see a sea full of masks. What is uncommon, however, is seeing such a pretty set of eyes right above one.___________________In which Marinette and Adrien are both Masked Beauties™, and all kinds of technically-Adrienette-but-still-with-masks goodness occurs.





	A Different Kind of Mask

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chimpukampu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chimpukampu/gifts).



> A lot of my knowledge about Beijing is based off of my insane AP World teacher’s stories. So I guess… take the world-building with a grain of salt? That said, the whole thing is kind of a retelling based off his stories (the ones he’d tell instead of teaching lol), so I suppose there’s gotta be some truth to them?
> 
> Check out Chimpukampu on tumblr for some fantastic ML fanart!!!! (Idk how to insert links, apologies there)
> 
> Enjoy :)

Masks, masks, and masks galore.

That was what Adrien saw as the bus rolled its way down the street.

The short and tall, thick and thin, young and old; no matter what type, at least one out of every third person outside wore one of them, pulled across their face and tucked up behind their ears. Some were white gauzy things, the kind you’d get out of a hospital or a doctor’s office, meant to keep you from spreading your germs around, while others appeared to cost a pretty, pretty penny. The latter were better for you, with all kinds of filters and mechanisms, pretty designs decorating the fronts of them, all of it meant to keep the air from killing you all the same. They all worked. Some better than others, but they all worked.

So people wore them.

It was better than becoming a statistic.

Grey, polluted smog settled thick over the city some mornings. It lurked around corners, followed you as you walked, like some kind of tail you couldn’t quite shake, whispering words meant to make you feel guilt over something that wasn’t your fault in your ears as you went. Everywhere you went, it was there, and every morning, it felt like it was just a little bit stronger. It always felt better come afternoon—sometimes enough that he’d go out, take in a deep breath, and not be able to see it—but something about the morning was different. It wasn’t like the morning was anything special, not when the smog was always there, but, Adrien would swear, it was thicker in the morning. Maybe it was just something about the air or the way the sun was still sunk below the horizon, but he would swear it was thicker in the morning.

Even through the mask, he was sure he could taste it in his lungs.

Out on the sidewalk, people in suits and expensive shoes walked, click-clacking their way down the sidewalk on their way to whatever kind of job they worked in whatever one of the skyscrapers they worked in, all of them passing with the same kind of expression in their eyes. Careful neutrality. Or maybe it was just the haze of the morning, painting on features that didn’t quite belong—he didn’t know. Sitting there, watching them all go by, he felt like he was just another masked face in a sea of bodies. One more pair of eyes just looking out as the world moved around him. People walked on anyways, some chatting while others just walked on with flat mouths and empty eyes, more and more of them crowding up the sidewalk with their bodies pressed against each other and their eyes just watching and watching.

Some seemed keen on inviting death, smoking cigarettes as they walked or letting their maskless faces breathe in the crisp, cool taint of pollution, but they walked on all the same.

His heart clenched at every one.

The bus rolled into a stop, the breaks squealing in protest and the doors creaking their way right on open, as they always did.

A squat little old lady boarded. She’d barely swiveled her head around for a second, eyes scanning the seat for a place to plop herself down, before he was hopping on up and putting his hand up on the metal bar, standing up a little straighter as he did it. She smiled, he smiled, and that was that. He was left with his hand reached up for the bar, she was left nestled in a seat where she belonged, her purse in her lap and a content smile on her face.

All over again, his heart sunk. She wasn’t wearing a mask—looking to be about as old as she was, people generally wore masks. Old lungs and polluted air just didn’t mix, and most people seemed to know that, whether their doctors had practically had to prescribe it to them, or they just had a little bit of common sense they were carrying around in their head, the older generations seemed to know it. But that woman perched in the seat, she didn’t have a mask.

It wasn’t his place to tell her squat about living her life. It wasn’t his place, and he wasn’t about to make it his place. If she hadn’t donned a mask by then, then he was pretty sure some random strangers’ words of advice on the subject weren’t going to be doing her any good, would just be a waste of any clean air left in the atmosphere. So, instead of saying anything on the subject, he just turned his head and looked right on out the window, looking on as the people kept on walking and the bus kept rolling down the street.

Time passed.

The old woman coughed.

More time passed.

Adrien’s heart pressed him into action, to reach into the bag on his shoulder and take out the spare mask, wrap it around her face, and let her know just how easy breathing could be if she let herself had the chance at cleaner air. But he did nothing.

Nope, he just stood there. The little old lady in the seat kept on coughing, her silken handkerchief pressed to her mouth each and every time she let out a huff, before she was folding it back up into a triangle and shoving it back into her pocket like nothing happened.

“Miss?”

Adrien looked up.

“Miss, I’m sorry to bother you…”

A girl stood about a foot off. She had her hand on her own pole, an older man stiffly sitting down in a seat on the other side of the bus’ crowded aisle where, he was willing to bet, she’d just sat. Black hair dusted around her shoulders, a warm kindness and a smile there in her eyes.

“Yes, dear?” The woman croaked. She sounded like she smoked six packs a day since she was twenty, or maybe, she’d just spent a year in Beijing without a mask on, walking the streets and inhaling the equivalent of those cancer sticks just by breathing in the foul air all around them with nothing standing in the way. Whether one or the other was true—or maybe both—Adrien couldn’t tell, but he did know that she was gazing up at that girl with a look just as warm as the girl’s own. It seemed like the sort of look that wouldn’t have been a stranger on a grandmother’s, looking on at their grandchildren scurrying about the yard.

The thought warmed Adrien’s heart, yet chilled it all the same.

A kind old grandma with old lungs and heaps of grandchildren to her family name, sitting there and breathing in all that air, as if the chemicals in it wouldn’t kill her if given just the slightest opportunity.

“I was wondering,” the girl went on, her hand going for something in her pocket, “If you'd like a mask? The air’s pretty bad today.” She smiled broader, and Adrien saw the white, clean fabric of a cloth mask, wrapped up in sterile plastic to keep any germs from getting into it.

The old woman smiled even wider. “I’ll be okay, sweetheart. Don’t you worry,” she said, sitting up a little straighter for emphasis.

Adrien sighed. He’d already known the answer—why else would such a woman, whose doctor had to have told her more than once to put on some kind of protection, go without on a day like this? But he couldn’t deny the way his chest sank at the confirmation, hearing it out loud.

The girl spared him a look. There was a sort of jolt to her body, her brows dipping down over her eyes in that just barely sort of way that… that he wasn’t sure was a good thing.

But before he could even realize it’d happened, the moment was gone, and the girl was turning back to the old woman. That mask was still held in her hand, and there was a sort of desperation in her eyes as she offered it up again.

“Please, miss?” she said, giving it a little shake of her hand.

“No, thank you.”

The woman turned her head away. That seemed to be that.

The girl retracted her mask and put it right back where she’d gotten it, that desperation still lingering in her eyes despite it all. She pulled the mask away with a sigh, leaning back against her metal pole, her hand wrapped around it still, like the lifeline it was. With that, it seemed the whole situation was done—done, over, finished, not to be picked up again and not to be brought up again, for that was it and it was that.

The girl stood there. She seemed to be having the same thought process that Adrien had had just a few moments ago—the woman didn’t have on a mask because she either didn’t believe in it, despite all the millions of statistics lined up against her, or she was too stubborn to finally bend and put it on. Either way, she wasn’t wearing one because she didn’t want to wear one, and nothing was going to be changing that fact any time soon.

He didn’t understand people like that. Or, well, he understood them—he understood why the woman hadn’t taken the mask: she was too stuck up in her own beliefs about the world that thinking about anything else just seemed like utter nonsense, so she was content to sit there and cough up her lungs, slowly inhaling all that pollution that she didn’t need to be inhaling and just hurting herself more in the process. He understood that that bull-headed stubbornness was there, understood her point of view on the situation just as well as the next person. But he didn’t quite understand why people were like that. Why did they just snub their nose up at some person, in this case the girl seething over from her pole a short way across from him, trying to help? Why was it that such a nice offer was snubbed for the sake of a stubborn idea with no real roots?

He shook his head, shaking off the thoughts as he did it.

That was probably it. Just… stubbornness. Roots in an idea that only really remained because the woman didn’t want to change her mind, open it up to some changed idea that all the young folk were thinking and admit that, perhaps, the idea she believed in was wrong.

He’d leave it at that for now.

Instead, he just looked right on out the window all over again. People walked on and on and on by on the sidewalk, just as they had been the entire time the bus had been slowly rolling down street after street on its way through the city. The old woman still sat, with her false sense of victory still sitting her high up on her high horse, all the while that girl still stood there and seethed about it all. Her eyes were pointed off out the same window his were, looking along and along with her thoughts stewing about what just happened, the people walking by all the same, oblivious about it all.

She blinked, moving her eyes back inside the bus.

Their eyes met.

Shock, that’s what he’d call the look on her face. She stood there, their eyes locked for just the split second they were, with a sort of socked look on her face. He understood; the old woman nested in her seat was just one of those infuriating people that caused that sort of shock—Adrien had had far too much experience with those people, had learned to keep his mouth shut about it all.

Once, at one of his father’s functions, he’d forgotten to sew his mouth shut. All it’d taken was one mention of the “homosexuals” and how all this bad, terrible, abhorrently disgusting stuff the city was going through was all their fault, how everything—from the smog to the economy to the terrible music on the radio—was their fault and nobody else’s. All it’d taken was that one mention, and Adrien’s mouth was opening. It’d started quiet on his end, a short little mention that, when egged on by the man behind the gross words, had grown just a little bit stronger and stronger, until Adrien was avidly arguing with the man about everything from Bible quotes to their ancestors, not caring about the slight imperfections in his Mandarin as he went or the eyes that were drifting their way, just blabbing on about all the ways in the world he wanted about how the man’s gross assumptions were wrong.

He’d gotten a talking-to after. Luckily, nothing ended up in the press, but that was one investor they weren’t going to be getting back. Adrien wasn’t particularly upset about that, if he was telling the truth—not in the slightest, not when they had so much better investors lined up and practically begging for a scrap of something. The man and his money weren’t a real loss. But he’d gotten a talking-to all the same, and he’d learned to shut his mouth up all the same. He didn’t say much at those functions any more—something of a ‘spoke when spoken to’ kind of rule his father had insisted on implementing after that incident—nor did he speak up when he heard something he felt… against. Stubborn people couldn’t be moved, his father had told him, and so trying to convince them without letting them realize it themselves wasn’t the best idea.

He’d agreed, and that was that.

He knew the internal battle that girl across the way was going through, and he felt for her. Feeling like there was a fight going on in your brain, one side begging for you to say something while the other just went on and on and on about how that stupid person just needed to listen to reason, a third innocently offering that maybe there was some side of the story they didn’t know and couldn’t understand, all of it getting nowhere and doing nothing. She’d just sit there and stew until some outside factor—maybe the old lady would get off the bus or some person would get her line of sight—got in between them. She’d sigh, realize that she couldn’t have changed the old woman’s opinion if she tried, then she’d let that ‘stay silent’ part of her mind take over and settle down for the time being. There might be a little something later, but for the most part, all that anger would disappear like some kind of will-o’-the-wisp in the night.

Yeah, he understood.

He felt for that girl.

He understood the old woman—maybe not all the way, but for the most part, he did—but he felt for the girl.

And so, as their eyes met and time stood still for just the slightest second, he offered her up a reassuring smile. Or, at least, he hoped it was reassuring.

The girl softened with a smile, leaning just the slightest bit more against her pole and offering him up a nod. It seemed he was understood, or at least that’s what he hoped had just happened, and that was going to be that, nothing more and nothing less.

The old woman settled in her seat like a nestling bird, shifting around as she huffed out some words about the myth of “bad air” and the “utter lack of respect for elders” that they apparently all had. He wasn’t sure if it was satisfaction or contempt on her face as she rearranged her purse in her lap, but it was there on her face all the same, ignoring the fact that the girl had just been trying to help.

No, Adrien wasn’t sure he’d ever understand people like that. He liked to keep an open mind, on most things—it took an effort sometimes, as was natural for anybody constantly trying to play devil’s advocate with themselves, but he tried his best, and his best was his best as far as he was concerned. As much as he tried to understand the old woman’s side of things, he knew he’d never honestly be able to consider her reasoning, not when he tried to hard to see the other side. He’d just keep his open mind, and she’d keep her closed mind. That would be that. He’d just never understand people like that.

The bus drifted on down the street, and his eyes drifted on out the window all over again.

His eyes settled on the girl, with that soft something of a smile still settled in there on the corners of her cheeks.

He couldn’t help but allow himself his own smile.

She wasn’t looking at him nor the old woman, just standing and swaying with the bus as it rolled over all the bumps and around all the sharp corners, shuddering to squealing stops here and speeding up faster than it ought to have there; instead, her eyes were just trained on the people outside on the sidewalk as they walked this way and that, going about their lives all the same, none of them caring about the reassuring smile he’d offered or the old woman sat in her seat.

He felt his heart warm right on up.

**Author's Note:**

> Tune in for chapter two whenever I get enough time to work on it (thanks IB program it’s real nice0
> 
> (Also I'm sorry if this is a trash gift, but I hope you like it :))


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